Angelic Encounters: Engaging Help from Heaven

Angelic Encounters by James and Michal Ann Goll is a must-read for those who are hungry to grow in their understanding of the invisible kingdom of God. This book is extremely inspirational and easy to read, and yet it can also be used as a textbook on the subject. Read Angelic Encounters, and then . . . have some.

—PATRICIA KING EXTREME PROPHETIC

With solid biblical teaching and an eye for the prophetic activity in our day, James W. and Michal Ann Goll have brought us a masterpiece in their latest book, Angelic Encounters. This book will add discernment, wisdom, and understanding to each one who has an ear to hear.

—DR. CHÉ AHN

HARVEST INTERNATIONAL MINISTRIES

AUTHOR, Fire Evangelism

Who hasn’t longed to have an encounter with one of God’s angels? This book by my friends James and Michal Ann Goll will inform, delight, and make you hungry for more of God’s supernatural intervention in your life. They did a superb job in weaving biblical examples with contemporary ones while illustrating what a multifaceted lot God’s angels really are. It’s a book I want to keep in my library for future research. I think you will, too.

—QUIN SHERRER

COAUTHOR, Lord, I Need to Pray With Power

If ever you have wished for answers to puzzling questions about angels, this book is a must-read! Not only do James and Michal Ann provide sound biblical teaching about the nature and function of angels, but they also share countless stories about angelic visitations, both their own and testimonies of others. It’s a wonderful resource for Bible studies.

—RUTHANNE GARLOCK

COAUTHOR, Lord, I Need Your Healing Power

Everything you ever wanted to know about angels can be found in this newest book by the Golls! Drawing from Scripture, James and Michal Ann lay a biblical foundation for this important topic and present us with a book that can actually be used as a reference work on angels. They also share experiences from their own lives as well as the lives of many others who have had encounters with the angelic realm. Not just a fascinating read, this book will leave you hungering for the supernatural realm in your life.

—JANE HANSEN

PRESIDENT/CEO, AGLOW INTERNATIONAL

Angelic Encounters is another timely book from James and Michal Ann Goll. Supernatural experiences are increasing all around us. We are in great need of instruction to help us clarify and understand the visitations that are becoming more and more common. While it is foolish to worship angels, it is equally foolish to ignore them. The Golls have given us the much-needed instruction that will prove helpful in enabling us to correctly steward this great day of heavenly invasions.

—BILL JOHNSON

SENIOR PASTOR, BETHEL CHURCH

AUTHOR, When Heaven Invades Earth

My first meeting with James Goll was through a recording where he talked about the opening of the portal resulting in Jacob’s encounter with angels in Genesis 28. That recording leapt in my spirit and compelled within me a desire to meet James Goll. Now James and Michal Ann have written this incredible book about what has become commonplace yet divine for them and others. We are living in an age when heaven has never been closer to Earth. This includes the awareness of and encounters with angels. This book will build your faith for all God has for us in this season.

—BARBARA J. YODER

SENIOR PASTOR, SHEKINAH CHRISTIAN CHURCH

ANN ARBOR, MI

Most CHARISMA HOUSE BOOK GROUP products are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchase for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, and educational needs. For details, write Charisma House Book Group, 600 Rinehart Road, Lake Mary, Florida 32746, or telephone (407) 333-0600.

ANGELIC ENCOUNTERS by James W. and Michal Ann Goll

Published by Charisma House

Charisma Media/Charisma House Book Group

600 Rinehart Road

Lake Mary, Florida 32746

www.charismahouse.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible Updated Edition, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

Scripture quotations marked AMP are from the Amplified Bible. Old Testament copyright © 1965, 1987 by the Zondervan Corporation. The Amplified New Testament copyright © 1954, 1958, 1987 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are from the New King James Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc., publishers. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, International Bible Society. Used by permission.

Cover Design: The DesignWorks Group, Charles Brock,

www.thedesignworksgroup.com

Cover Image: iStockphoto.com, Linus Sebastian

Design Director: Justin Evans

Copyright © 2007 by James W. and Michal Ann Goll

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging.in.Publication Data:

Goll, Jim W.

Angelic encounters / by James W. and Michal Ann Goll. -- 1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-59979-065-7 (trade paper)

1. Angels--Christianity. 2. Visions. I. Goll, Michal Ann. II. Title.

BT966.3.G65 2007

235’.3--dc22

2007002164

E-book ISBN: 978-1-59979-620-8

We would like to dedicate this book to our mothers who marked our lives with prayer and consecration to the Lord Jesus Christ. They both now make up a part of the great cloud of witnesses who have gone on before us. We love and miss you!

• Amanda Elizabeth (Burns) Goll, mother of James W. Goll

• Dorris Grace (McCoy) Willard, mother of Michal Ann Goll

You shaped our lives to be who we are today!

Acknowledgments

Every book that we compose is like having another child. A lot of love and nurture go into each birthing. Midwives also help deliver the goods, and in this project we have a few that we would like to acknowledge.

First, we want to thank the Lord for Bert Ghezzi, the former editorial director of Charisma House, and all the current staff of this great publishing company. Kathy Deering, our dear writing partner with this project, is one of heaven’s great gems in the earth. We also want to thank the Lord for the sacrificial service from the staff of Encounters Network and Compassion Acts who hold up our hands in a constant and consistent manner. Your labors of love are noticed, and we give thanks to the Lord for each and every one of you!

Contents

Foreword by J. Lee Grady

1 Jacob’s Ladder Keeps Coming Down

2 My Personal Angelic Encounters

3 Invaded! (by Michal Ann Goll)

4 The Nature of These Celestial Beings

5 The Characteristics of Angels

6 Angelic Assignments

7 Jesus and the Ministering Angels

8 Modern-Day Reports of Angelic Encounters (by Michal Ann Goll)

9 Discerning the Angelic Presence

10 Angelic Intervention Through Intercession

11 The Work of Angels and the Nation of Israel

12 Angels, the Harvest, and the End Times

Notes

Foreword

The first time I met James Goll, he looked at me with his piercing eyes and asked a probing question: Lee, do you have enough people praying for you?

We were driving through the streets of downtown Atlanta together, headed to a banquet for authors and publishers. But when Jim posed this odd question, I quickly lost track of time and place. It seemed as if he were looking past the moving scenery and into an invisible, eternal realm. I knew he could see something I couldn’t.

Why do you say that? I asked, knowing that I have always felt awkward asking people to pray for me on a regular basis.

I really feel you need more prayer covering, Jim said. It’s urgent. With all that you are involved in, you are a target of the enemy. You must recruit more intercessors.

Our conversation shifted to other matters during that evening, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Jim’s prophetic directive. I trusted his words because I knew God was speaking to him. And I knew Jim could see that something was missing in my life. I needed to ask the Lord for angelic protection.

As soon as I got home from that trip I became bolder about asking for prayer support. Every time I preached somewhere I asked intercessors to commit to praying regularly for my family and my overseas travels. Within a year I had more than one hundred prayer warriors backing me up.

These prayer warriors were praying for me when I was in Muslim-dominated areas of northern Nigeria, when I was among Indonesia’s largest unreached people group, and when I was challenging the spiritual strongholds of domestic violence in Guatemala and El Salvador. I have now preached in more than twenty nations and have always felt a blanket of invisible protection over me—even when a South American dictator once kicked my colleagues and me out of our conference venue so he could hold a political rally.

God has always stationed His angels around me, and I have no doubt that those same angels helped me obtain passports, visas, and lost sermon notes; strengthened me against sickness and disease; stabilized airplanes during turbulence; hid me from thieves, thugs, and scam artists; shielded my house from hurricane winds; and fought off demonic missiles that were headed in my direction.

I have actually never seen the angels that protect me, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Faith, according to the Bible, is the evidence of things not seen (Heb. 11:1). I know God has stationed His armies around the righteous who are doing His will.

But there are certainly times when God opens the eyes of His people to see what He is doing in the supernatural realm. And Jim and Michal Ann Goll, as prophets to the body of Christ, have been given this ability so that they can encourage us all to experience the miraculous.

Jim Goll is what some people call a seer, a prophet with a special gift from the Holy Spirit that enables him to see into the invisible realm. This ability has nothing to do with the occult. It is a gift Paul mentioned in his letter to the Corinthians:

For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, and to another the effecting of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another the distinguishing of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues.

—1 Corinthians 12:8–10, emphasis added

Those who operate at the highest level of discernment of spirits are able to see into the invisible realm. They can see the angels of God, and they also can perceive the work of demonic spirits. Armed with keen eagle vision, they can see through God’s eyes by the Holy Spirit so that they can expose the strategies of the devil’s forces and also commission God’s angelic warriors for battle.

Many of us trudge through life only living by what our eyes see. We may become discouraged because of circumstances and difficulties. If only we could see into the invisible realm! We would discover that God has been warring in the heavenlies over our situation. We would see that angels have been fighting for us and shielding us from danger.

In the Old Testament, we learn that the prophet Elisha’s attendant was worried about the encroaching armies of Aram. He cried out to Elisha, What shall we do? (2 Kings 6:15).

Elisha offered assurance to his disciple and said, Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them (v. 16). Those words may not have been too convincing if Elisha’s assistant had only looked at what he saw in the natural. Aram’s armies looked fierce and intimidating. The circumstances looked bleak. But the Bible tells us in 2 Kings 6:17:

Then Elisha prayed and said, O LORD, I pray, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the servant’s eyes and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

When I read this passage about Elisha, I think of James and Michal Ann Goll. Like Elisha, they have been blessed to see what many of us cannot discern. They have known the power of God’s angels, and they have seen them on many occasions. And just as Elisha longed for his servant to see the flaming armies of heaven, the Golls are eager for us to see into this supernatural realm. That is why they have written this book—to help open your eyes to the reality of angels and to teach you how to experience all the benefits of God’s angelic protection.

I pray that as you read this book your eyes will indeed be opened to the unseen realm. May you suddenly recognize that your Father’s heavenly army surrounds you and that your enemies have been outnumbered by heaven’s victorious forces.

—J. LEE GRADY

EDITOR, Charisma MAGAZINE

DIRECTOR, THE MORDECAI PROJECT

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!

Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!

Heir of salvation, purchase of God,

Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

Perfect submission, perfect delight,

Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;

Angels descending bring from above

Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

¹

ONE

Jacob’s Ladder Keeps

Coming Down

Who could have imagined? Heaven opened up and visitors came down for an earthly visit. They revealed God’s intentions, and they made promises (and the promises came true).

The man who was privileged to receive the angelic visitors did not seem to deserve such a high honor. As a matter of fact, his character was seriously flawed. He had conspired with his mother, cheated his older brother, and even deceived his ailing father. The night the angels came down, he was running like a fugitive from his home, from his God, and from his own true calling, destiny, and identity. The night with the angels changed all that.

Jacob was destined to become the father of the twelve great tribes of Israel, but he was on the run from Beersheba to Haran, which was twelve miles north of Jerusalem. Night fell, so he found a rock for a pillow and, exhausted, sank into a deep sleep. He began to dream. Now, you might think that having gone off to sleep in such a disturbed condition, he might have had nightmares, full of tension and anxiety. God would have been justified in giving him dreams full of stern admonitions about honesty, truthfulness, and obedience, dreams that would have warned him about the certain penalty for his enormous sins.

Instead, a gracious God gave Jacob a glimpse of heaven coming down to Earth. This man named Jacob, who was a deceiver and a supplanter, saw a sight that few others have seen. God’s own illumination lit up the darkness, stretching from heaven to Earth and back again. Jacob beheld the transcendent beauty of the Lord God. Ministering angels—too many to count—moved down and up on a heavenly ladder or staircase. Jacob was dreaming, but the angels were real.

How do we know they were real? Because of his profound reaction to this experience. Here’s how the scriptural account reads:

Then Jacob departed from Beersheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and spent the night there, because the sun had set; and he took one of the stones of the place and put it under his head, and lay down in that place.

He had a dream, and behold, a ladder was set on the earth with its top reaching to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, "I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants.

"Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and in you and in your descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.

Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it. He was afraid and said, How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

So Jacob rose early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on its top. He called the name of that place Bethel; however, previously the name of the city had been Luz.

Then Jacob made a vow, saying, If God will be with me and will keep me on this journey that I take, and will give me food to eat and garments to wear, and I return to my father’s house in safety, then the LORD will be my God. This stone, which I have set up as a pillar, will be God’s house, and of all that You give me I will surely give a tenth to You.

—Genesis 28:10–22

Jacob was blown away. He had had an encounter with God Himself, who stood at the top of the heavenly ladder, directing everything so that the generational blessing and destiny He had promised to Jacob’s grandfather would be fulfilled. Here’s how it is described in Matthew Henry’s Commentary:

Angels are employed as ministering spirits, to serve all the purposes and designs of Providence, and the wisdom of God is at the upper end of the ladder, directing all the motions of second causes to the glory of the first Cause. The angels are active spirits, continually ascending and descending; they rest not, day nor night, from service, according to the posts assigned them. They ascend, to give account of what they have done, and to receive orders; and then descend, to execute the orders they have received. Thus we should always